A Global Industry

CHAPTER •••• 1 A global industry Introduction The conference industry is a young, dynamic industry which is growing and maturing at a rapid rate. From origins in Europe and North America, it is now a truly international industry witnessing huge investments across all continents. Its youthfulness, however, does mean that it lacks some of the necessary characteristics of more established industries, such as well defined terminology, adequate market intelligence, appropriate education and training structures and clear entry routes. Conferences are part of the business tourism (or business events) sector, a major though often under-valued sector of the wider tourism industry. This chapter looks at: • the origins of the conference industry • the foundations of a proper industry • the industry’s recent globalisation • world rankings of leading cities and countries • certain industry shortcomings • industry parameters and definitions • business tourism and leisure tourism • the benefits of conference and business tourism. It includes case studies on: • City of Melbourne, Australia • The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London, England • Hyderabad International Convention Centre, India • Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates • Coral Beach Hotel and Resort, Paphos, Cyprus. Conferences and Conventions Learning outcomes On completion of this chapter, you should be able to: • Explain why and how the conference industry developed in the way it did • Understand the international dimensions of the industry and appreciate which are the most successful cities and countries • Discuss the features of the industry which illustrate the steps still required to achieve full maturation • Understand the key benefits afforded by conference and business tourism, and what distinguishes it from leisure tourism. THE ORIGINS OF THE CONFERENCE INDUSTRY American Presidents hosting the latest Middle East Summit at Camp David in Maryland, the Royal College of Nursing holding its annual conference in Bournemouth, members of the Interna- tional Congress and Convention Association gathering for their assembly and congress in Montevideo, shareholders of Microsoft or HSBC attending the company’s annual general meeting, the sales force of GlaxoSmithKline coming together for a regular briefing or training event, or their high achievers jetting off for an incentive-cum-meeting trip to an exotic overseas destination. The different events described above have one thing in com- mon: they are all to do with bringing people together, face-to-face, to exchange ideas and information, to discuss and in some cases negotiate, to build friendships and closer business relationships, to encourage better performance by individuals and organiza- tions. They are different facets of the same dynamic, international, economically vibrant conference industry. The terms used (‘summit’, ‘meeting’, ‘conference’, ‘assembly’, ‘convention’, ‘congress’, ‘AGM’, ‘briefing’, ‘training’, ‘incentive’) may vary, and the events themselves may have different formats and emphases, but the essential ingredients and objectives are the same. Conferences are at the forefront of modern communications, whether this is for internal communications (sales meetings, training seminars, board retreats, major annual conferences, for example) or as a vehicle for communicating with key audiences (such as press briefings, product launches, annual general meetings, some technical conferences). Conferences is a generic term to describe a diverse mix of communications events. The phrase ‘conference industry’ is of very recent origin, and is certainly not one that would have been heard until the second half of the twentieth century. Yet people’s need to congregate ••••• 2 A global industry and confer is one of the things that defines our humanity and, for a multitude of different reasons, meetings and gatherings of people have taken place since the early days of civilization. Shone (1998) traces the evolution of meetings since Roman times in Britain and Ireland, and the development of meeting rooms and meeting places to accommodate these, driven largely by the needs of trade and commerce. One of the highest profile events in the past couple of hun- dred years, perhaps almost a launch event for our contempo- rary conference industry, was the Congress of Vienna held from September 1814 to June 1815. The Congress was called to re- establish the territorial divisions of Europe at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and representatives included all of the major world powers of the day (with the exception of Turkey). It is tempting to imagine what the ‘delegate spend’ must have been like, with delegates such as Alexander I, Emperor of Russia, Prince Karl August von Hardenberg from Prussia, and Viscount Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington as the principal British representatives. Each representative would have been accompanied by a substantial delegation of support staff and partners, requiring accommodation, social programmes, lavish corporate entertainment, ground handling, not to mention state-of-the-art conference facilities. The Vienna Convention Bureau no doubt celebrated long and hard its success in attracting such a high- profile, high-spend event to the city! As the nineteenth century progressed, universities increasingly provided facilities for the dissemination of information within academic circles, while the boom in spa towns and, in the UK, Victorian resorts with assembly rooms began to make available larger public spaces for entertainment and meetings. At the same time, the development of the railway network was accompanied by the construction of railway hotels alongside major stations. Many of these hotels had substantial function rooms available for hire. Shone contends that the dawn of the twentieth century was accompanied by a change in the demand for meetings: Though assemblies and congresses continued to be driven by trade and industry, there was a slow and grad- ual increase in activity which, rather than promoting prod- ucts, or reporting a company’s annual progress, looked to developing staff and sales. The precursors of the sales training meeting, the ‘congress of commercials’ (or com- mercial travellers) of the 1920s and 1930s, began to develop into something more modern and recognizable. The situation was somewhat different in North America during the latter half of the nineteenth century, particularly across the 3 ••••• Conferences and Conventions eastern seabord of the USA where various trade and professional associations, as well as religious groups, were being formed and, as they became more established, beginning to hold conventions for their memberships. Gartrell (1994) records that, in due course, a number of committees were also created to: lure the growing convention business from these expand- ing and thriving associations’. As more and more cities became aware of the value of convention business, Gartrell suggests that it was ‘inevitable that the solicita- tion of these conventions would be assigned to a full-time salesperson; and, while this might have happened in any one of many major cities, history records that it first happened in Detroit, Michigan, when a group of businessmen decided to place a full-time salesperson on the road to invite conventions to their city. Thus, in 1896, the first convention bureau was formed, and an industry emerged. Detroit was shortly followed by other US cities which established their own convention bureaux: Cleveland (1904), Atlantic City (1908), Denver and St Louis (1909), Louisville and Los Angeles (1910). Now many cities around the world have their own convention bureau, or convention and visitor bureau. THE FOUNDATIONS OF A PROPER INDUSTRY While the origins of today’s conference industry lie in the polit- ical and religious congresses of earlier centuries, followed by business meetings and, in the USA, trade and professional association conventions, the development and recognition of a proper ‘industry’ is a much more recent phenomenon, in Europe espe- cially, effectively dating from the middle to latter part of the twentieth century. The foundation of trade associations is often a useful, objec- tive way of marking the real formation of an industry. Some of the principal conference industry associations were founded as follows: International Association of Exhibitions and Events (IAEE) – 1928 Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) – 1957 Association Internationale des Palais de Congrès (AIPC) – 1958 International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) – 1963 European Federation of Conference Towns (EFCT) – 1964 ••••• 4 A global industry International Association of Professional Congress Organizers (IAPCO) – 1968 British Association of Conference Destinations (BACD) – 1969 Meeting Professionals International (MPI) – 1972 Meetings & Events Australia (MEA) (originally Meetings Industry Association of Australia – MIAA) – 1975 Association of British Professional Conference Organizers (ABPCO) – 1981 Meetings Industry Association (MIA) (UK) – 1990 The Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI) (until 2005 known as the International Association of Convention and Visitor Bureaus – IACVB), on the other hand, with a pre- dominantly North American membership, was founded as long ago as 1914. Since the 1960s there has been a steadily increasing investment in the whole infrastructure that supports conferences, meetings and related events, an investment which accelerated into a rapid growth during the 1990s. The 1990s were almost

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